The Camel Trader
of Babylon
The hungrier one becomes the clearer one’s mind works, also the more sensitive one becomes to the odors of food.
For two days Tarkad, the son of Azur, had tasted no food except two small figs purloined from over the wall of a garden before an angry Babylonian housekeeper chased him down the street. The woman’s cries still rang in his ears and restrained his restless fingers from snatching tempting fruits from the baskets of the market women between whom he strolled.
He paced back and forth before the eating house hoping to meet someone he knew; someone from whom he could borrow a bit of copper that would gain him a friendly smile and a liberal helping from the fat keeper. Without the copper he knew how unwelcome he would be.
In his abstraction he unexpectedly found himself face to face with the tall bony figure of Dabasir, the camel trader.
“Ha! ’Tis Tarkad, whom I have been seeking that he might repay to me the two pieces of copper which I loaned to him a moon ago and the piece of silver which I loaned to him before that. We are well met. I can make good use of the coin this very day. What say, boy? What say?”
—35—
